Fantasy Tour Down Under: the winners!

How did you did you do in the first Fantasy competition of the year? Simon Gerrans couldn't quite find his form of last year, and Geraint Thomas couldn't quite hang on up the Wilunga Hill climb on stage 5; It was Tom Jelte Slagter who walked away with the spoils in Adelaide.

That win was enough to push him up to 19th overall in our Fantasy Cycling rankings. Peter Sagan is still in an unassailable-for-now lead after some fine riding last year, with Alejandro Valverde and Bradley Wiggins in the other podium slots. But what of our fantasy players? who came out on top and won a swanky £750 wheelset courtesy of our pals at Bontrager? Over three thousand of you picked a team for Down Under, half as many again as last year.

Well, that would be team pacer boy from user marobertson. The TDU wasn't the simplest race to call and they were only 608th after a fairly ordinary start. It all went right from there though: top of the pile with 190 points on stage three and solid scores from then on in meant that when they hit the front on stage 5 they managed to stay out to the line.

812 points is a very decent haul for six stages, but 741 points with no transfers is an even more impressive achievement. Team Blokes on Spokes didn't pick Slagter but they did have Greipel, Thomas, the Izagirre brothers, Javier Moreno and more, and ended up racing to the purist victory by 87 points. Not bad.

So user 094459 (catchy name) gets a prize too, and so do all our stage winners. They get socks. and here they all are:

Well done to everyone who won and thanks for everyone for taking part! Next up is the Tour of Qatar: sandy, windy racing starts on Sunday and it's one for the sprinters. If you're signed up for premium, the Tour Mediterenéen starts on 6 February too.

Dave is a founding father of road.cc and responsible for kicking the server when it breaks. In a previous life he was a graphic designer but he's also a three-time Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling world champion, and remains unbeaten through the bog. Dave rides all sorts of bikes but tends to prefer metal ones. He's getting old is why.